[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #28 THOSE WITH WHOM YOU CAN'T HAVE A CONVERSATION

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall 

2020 Neurons #28

June 1, 2020

Thinking for a Living series #13

 

Correction: The policeman responsible for the

death of Floyd is Derek Chauvin

Update the charge is now first-degree murder.

 

THOSE WITH WHOM

YOU CAN'T HAVE A CONVERSATION

 

 

To have a real and authentic conversation, you have to have two persons who
are willing to be open-minded and think critically.  Each person has to be
willing to start from the position that they do not know-it-all and that
they may be mistaken.  If you cannot start on this premise, you really
cannot have an authentic conversation.  You can have a debate!  You can
banter back and forth trying to see who can "win" points over the other and
"defeat" the other, but you cannot have an open conversation that encourages
true thinking, exploration, and learning.

 

I learned this afresh during the past two weeks with some NLP Trainers.
Yes, NLP trainers!  And yes, you would think (well, I would think) that
someone who has been trained in the Meta-Model of Language would know
better, but lo and behold, I found out that it is not so.  When I invited
them to at least consider the idea that there are other views about viruses,
epidemiology, microbiology which the mainstream media has been presenting,
some cannot and will not even consider that possibility.  They closed down
the conversation before it began.

[And considering is the first step in real thinking, after that comes
questioning, doubting, inferring, etc.  See Executive Thinking (2019)]

 

Instead, three or four of the well-known trainers immediately went into
attack against me, against the person presenting the ideas, and used all
sorts of fallacious arguments.  They attacked the person- the ad hominem
argument, attacking the character of the person, non sequitur argument by
bringing irrelevant side issues, and straw man argument, exaggerating the
position until it was ridiculous and easy to defeat.

 

Now it has been said that when you cannot reason logically about a position,
the best thing is to raise your voice, passionately pound your fist on the
table, and accuse the person presenting a radical idea or an unthinkable
idea.  And that's pretty much what happened.  I asked a question, "Is there
anything that this person said that was true, good, and you could agree
with?"  No reply.  Later I repeated the question, "I refused to listen to
him from that perspective."  When I asked why, he said, "That's the way to
get seduced into falsehood."

"Oh really?  You cannot think critically sufficiently well enough so that
you could tell what's right and what's wrong? [pause] ...   Does the fact
that someone might make some good points mean that you have to agree with
everything the person says?"

 

What I walked away from the furor caused by the invitation to think was that
even in the field of NLP and even among those who are trainers and leaders-
critical thinking is severely missing.  That's because critical thinking
requires more than just the intellectual understanding of how to ask
questions, how to following a line of thinking, how to recognize cognitive
distortions, fallacies, and biases.  It requires an emotional state of
openness and vulnerability.  For myself, I am quite willing to listen to,
read, and have a conversation with someone I disagree with, even strongly
disagree.  Why?  Because I might learn something.  Because I might be wrong.
Because I might not have the critical information that I need.  Because
whatever the person says is his or her understanding ... and there will
always be good points in that person's position.

 

Conversing over areas of disagreement does not mean you have to agree.  You
are just talking, considering, thinking things over, thinking things
through, sorting out sources of information, asking about what science the
person is depending on, etc.  It is when people cannot and will not talk
with each other that they then fall back to power maneuvers, the last of
which is violence.  That's how the human race has pretty much behaved in all
of the millennia until now.  But today war and violence is far too deadly.
Plus, and more importantly, using violence to solve differences of opinion
really does not solve anything.

 

We solve differences of opinion by talking things out, reasoning together.
Now we are to "communication" and why it is so important.  By talking
through difficult issues, taking the time to listen to each other, to
understand each other, and to think about our thinking-the meta-thinking of
examining the quality of our thinking- that's how we resolve conflicts and
differences.

 

Yet most people do not know how to do this.  That's because it requires
certain competencies and the ability to manage one's states.  The person who
doesn't know that gets his "buttons pushed," becomes defensive, and then the
"conversation" degrades into a debate, a battle of wits, a bantering of
name-calling.  This happens in business, it happens in politics, it happens
in families, it happens on a regular basis among us humans.

 

One insight from this is the essentiality of clear, effective, and
respectful communication.  And that's the domain of NLP and Neuro-Semantics.
Yes, the US government, and most other governments, classified "training" as
non-essential.  Training in communication is non-essential!?  Actually, it
is the most essential thing of all.

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

International Society of Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

 

    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

 

cid:image002.png at 01D6149D.5CB2A1C0

 

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